>I'm confused as to why you think data structure literals are part of Clojure's core thesis. I use refs, atoms, and agents very sparingly. You just don't need

>I'm confused as to why you think data structure literals are part of Clojure's core thesis. I use refs, atoms, and agents very sparingly. You just don't need them very much when you have a suite of performant, immutable data structures (with literals). These data structures, and the assortment of polymorphic functions provided in the language to operate on them, imo are the crux of the language. They dominate the experience of the programmer. As far as managing state goes, they make it so that you rarely have to reach for the explicit constructs listed above.